4 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP SHARP. 



The first period of a man's life, which is spent 

 in his nurture and education, though it is far 

 from being insignificant in itself, for it is the 

 foundation of the whole superstructure that is 

 afterwards raised upon it ; yet commonly 

 proves a barren subject, through the scarcity of 

 materials. But this does not lessen the curio- 

 sity of some, which extends itself to the know- 

 ledge of the earliest and most minute particu- 

 lars that can with certainty be reported, con- 

 cerning those who have at length proved eminent 

 in their times. And it has, accordingly, been 

 usual with those writers who have taken upon 

 them to recommend the lives and actions of 

 such men to posterity, to accommodate them- 

 selves to this taste as far as it lay in their 

 power, by picking up and preserving all the 

 scattered notices to be met with of what they 

 did, and what happened to them in the first 

 stages of life. In discharge, therefore, of this 

 customary debt to such undertakings, and to 

 gratify the peculiar relish of those to whom the 

 relation of such little incidents is agreeable, and 

 likewise to make the narrative appear something- 

 more complete, a few of the most material pas- 

 sages of this kind shall be selected. 



His father and mother were religious, honest, 

 and hospitable people, and beloved in their 

 neighbourhood ; but yet in a different way of 



